Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Just Those Bare Unnecessaries

What is, is tedious, unremarkable. Only
temporary and quickly ameliorated ignorance leads us to be interested
in “interesting” things. Yet the facts of our world are so highly
critical of us and our misconstruals, as to be dictatorial; but this
is (only) one way of looking at things. Another is as worlds,
each world having different facts – each of us, in fact, being
entitled not only to our own opinions but, as well, to our own facts.
Thus it is that the rain of criticisms is greatly multiplied, and the
reign of others becomes unbearable, if untenable. Each, who knows no
better, attempts to lay waste the worlds of each other. It is nothing
but pious fraudulence – spiritual flatulence – to pretend to be
doing, ever, anything else (and so do I seek to lay waste to thee).

Facts,
as facts, limit us in
body and mind. The imagination – disappearing, it is said, with
every YouTube video a child sees – is left to explore. The bottom
of the sea: nothing but facts. But we base our imaginings on facts,
so let's look again: just as a prisoner bases his or her imaginings
on facts. Imaginings are the ghostly remains of what were once beyond
the realm of human knowledge or of some
humans' knowledge. The tracked earth, soared heights, and plumbed
depths are each in their turns subjected to domination. The birds,
flying about “uncooked,” become facts.

This
describes the result of one type of view of the world. It is
nonetheless the dominant one, if not in number then in fact.
It is uninteresting, whatever happened in fact. What didn't happen
(but might have instead) dwarfs the fatum brutum,
the brute fact, itself little different
– whatever it is – from a roll of a die. A sports event ends when
the dice stop, and some attach importance to the result. Some lose;
some profit. No die roll is different, in essence, in fact, from any
other. The facts of the die roll as such are the same between all.
Surrounding facts, giving context of importance some might say, are
each a die rolling. We link them, imagining as most do, to suss out
their meaning. We factify them. And we try our hands at the
demolition of others' interpretations. We give our support, in the
end, to further this demolition. We take special care the carcass,
when demolished, doesn't fall onto us!

I sit
in the coffee shop, among many, some of us reading, some playing
games with noisy blocks (or dice?), some discussing or extemporizing
upon work. There is no
place nearby – is there? – free of talk of the facts, of work.
Thus, I ask: What point to work is there, but more work,
of this work? Many do nothing – or do they? – but work: their
rest is recuperation for work
to follow; their reading the taking in, blindly, of information to
get ahead at work;
their recreation is opportunity for networking;
their worship will be subversive comparison of others' work.

What
is outside work? Is there any point – is there any hope of a world
without constant devotion to work?
“Take pride in your work.” What is this pride, who is to take
(and give) this pride, why
ought we take this pride? Take pride in your work, that your heirs
may take pride in theirs, and so on. A hand turning a crank, that
moves the hand – forever.

The
imagination is beyond work. In imagining, we turn from facts – from
work – to what is not, some of which may be, once certain works
have been done; but here we are back in the world of work! The
impossible, then, is that part
of the imagination that deals with work, if at all, in a wholly
negative way. Whatever can't be done circumscribes work.
If there seems to be work that cannot be done, we have made a
mistake. We have confused the impossible with what is possible.

We
need what is unnecessary. To live in the impossible is to live beyond
necessity. It is not so strange. When one imagines, one just might
wander into the blessed turmoil of what cannot be, and there to find
a why to live.